


Sors immanis et inanis

by unsettled



Category: Sherlock Holmes (Downey films)
Genre: M/M, music meme
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-21
Updated: 2013-12-21
Packaged: 2018-01-05 08:56:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,365
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1092020
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unsettled/pseuds/unsettled
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Music meme for Blackwood/Coward</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sors immanis et inanis

**Author's Note:**

> For this meme:  
> 1\. Pick a character, pairing, or whatever you like.  
> 2\. Turn on your music player and put it on random/shuffle.  
> 3\. Write a drabble related to each song that plays. You only have the time frame of the song to finish the drabble; you start when the song starts, and stop when it's over. No lingering afterward!  
> 4\. Do ten of these, then post them.

1\. Amateur Lovers – Switchfoot

It's not apparent when he first meets Blackwood, no, but it comes to his attention soon enough. There's a hole in Blackwood that he understands. A hole that he circles around, cautious, wary, because he knows that emptiness too well, knows what it tastes like. After all, it resides within himself as well. He thinks, after Blackwood approaches him, yet again, on some flimsy pretense, like Coward can't see right through all those games Blackwood plays, that Blackwood sees it as well, sees the way they can't set a hook in each other, unable to be caught. They have the same disease, it seems, and neither is that eager to cure it. 

*

2\. The Treason of Isengard – Howard Shore

It was heroic, he tells them, when they question him. Over and over again. A martyr, he tells them, he cause was the greatest, greater than any of them will ever know. Tells them, he will return, his business unfinished, he will return. His was the only clear mind left in these dark days. 

But later, when he's been tossed back into his wretched little cell, forgotten except to laugh at as he rots, he can't keep telling himself the same lies. Thinks of Blackwood's slowly turning body, and knows there was nothing heroic about it. That the rot had already taken hold. 

That there was no one coming back, no one coming for him. 

*

3\. Fortuna Imperatrix Mundi – Carl Off

He knows, unlike most of the gullible fools that attend these gatherings, that all the trappings of the rituals are just that, meaningless excesses of Henry's dramatic leanings. That for those with real power, there is no need for anything more than your will, none of these ridiculous esoteric objects and symbolic bits and bobs. You need not even speak your desires; an eloquent look does as well there as it does when Coward wishes to lure Henry to his bed. 

Yet he makes little objection, for in the end there is one flourish he finds most compelling. The chants aren't necessary, the bastardized Latin meaningless, but the poetry Henry's voice makes out of the most inane of phrases is all Coward needs to justify finding ritual after ritual that requires more and more invocations. 

*

4\. Burn – Ellie Goulding

Blackwood has ambition. Burns with ambition, and he knows how to ignite it in others, what to say and what to give them and how to push them until they are as consumed as he, endlessly hungry for the things just outside their reach. Never within their reach, except Blackwood, Blackwood, who holds all in his grasp and finds it never enough. 

He has spoken to Coward, and Coward has felt the heat start in his belly, felt it race through him, leave him wanting and needing and empty. Leave his fingers trembling, searching, until he touches Blackwood, and there, there he finds himself glutted. The burn of Blackwood's touch, the hunger of his regard, those are the only things Coward needs. Those are the things within his reach, and he finds himself wanting nothing more.

*

5\. My Kind of Love – Emeli Sande

Yes, he wants. Yes, he needs, even. When Blackwood looks at him like that, it's all he can do not to _take_. He doesn't think Blackwood knows. Hopes he doesn't, but hopes are easily dashed. 

As they are when Blackwood comes to him, makes him an offer. For a moment he can't process what he's hearing, and then - 

He _wants_ of course he does, but that doesn't mean he's going to fall to his knees for Blackwood. Doesn't mean he's going to set aside what he is for some upstart bastard, no matter how beautiful, no matter how much he longs for him. Doesn't mean he's going to let himself be insulted like this. 

"I am not for sale," he hisses, hating himself as he sees his chance slipping away with the shock in Blackwood's eyes. 

*

6\. Strange Fruit - AaRON

Henry offers him an orange once, in the dead of winter, a Hesperides gift. It is brilliant, a vivid reminder of what Blackwood commands, and the taste of it on his tongue lingers long after Blackwood's kissed it away. His hands are sticky when he touches Blackwood's skin, as though coated with blood. 

He offers Henry and apple, once, cut in half so the star shows, boldly. Henry smiles at him when he takes it, and Coward links their fingers together. _And so do I take thee_ , he says, and the juice runs down Henry's chin when he bites into the white flesh. 

They eat a pomegranate together, late in the evening, reclining on Henry's bed, fingers sticky and lips stained red. They tried to keep count of how many seeds each had had, but lost count somewhere around forty. _Forty years isn't that long,_ he says. 

_Long enough,_ Henry says

*

7\. Shake It Out – Florence and the Machine

He doesn't want to believe it, when he first finds out. Coward has been closer to him than any, as close as his skin, as close as the devil on his back. Coward has shared his dreams, he's thought, has shared his desires. Has been willing for so much. He doesn't want to believe it could be false, that he could have been played like that, used. 

He finds the truth of it in Coward's smile, in Coward's too dark eyes, in his easy dismissal of the rumors. Sees it, and knows it to be true. 

Coward's eyes are even darker when his head lolls, blank and thoughtless, his body tucked in Blackwood's arms, too tenderly, as though he could still find some scrap of the man he thought could be enough. 

*

8\. The Last Song I’m Wasting On You - Evanescence

He makes the offer, hoping. He doesn’t think it's really even a question, that he's really giving Coward choice here, that Coward will even consider refusing him. Why should he? Coward is a perfect match for the council; he can be given what he wants and serve their wishes at the same time. He smiles when he tells Coward that it's meant to be. 

He doesn't say it, but it's no less true; Coward could have him. 

Coward smiles back, just as sincerely, when he tells Blackwood not today. 

*

8\. Starlight - Muse

"I could take them away," it says.   
_black leather fluttering in the wind, cold, grey_  
Crouches next to him, black robe pooling on the filthy floor. "You wouldn't have to remember all the -"  
 _the hand that touches the faint scars from repeated vowing_  
"Shouldn't have to remember," it says, almost sadly.   
_a kiss, faint and blurred around the edges, but warm all the same_  
"I’m already forgetting," he tells it. 

*

9\. Mind Heist – Zack Hemsey

The world of Henry's mind is nothing like what he expected. It's fragmented, scraps of London shoved in alongside … things he has no name for, dully colored buildings that look at though they've melted, look as though something eaten parts of them. There are skittering noises in the streets; he runs, blindly, search for something familiar, anything familiar. "Henry," he shouts, and again, and again, hope dying in his throat. Suddenly everything around him lights up, one brilliant, painful flash of light, and he is falling, tumbling through blank space, endlessly.

He wakes up screaming, sweating, the tech hovering over him with a worried look. He takes a deep breath, tries not to give into despair. 

Looks at the body laid out beside him. 

"We'll try again,:" he says. "Until I find him."

*

10.

Coward's eyes are a shade of blue Blackwood doesn't have a name for. He considers a number of increasingly poetic terms before dismissing them all; it doesn't help that Coward's eyes shift endlessly, from a clear and bottomless shade when caught in sunlight, to a deep, frightening shade in the dark of their bedroom. 

Coward dizzies him, leaves him caught in his gaze. "Have you put the evil eye on me," he asks once, amused, and Coward laughs. 

"No more than you have on me, I think," he replies. Blinks, lazily, and Blackwood finds himself trapped once more.


End file.
